


Another Time and Place

by dannihowell (iguessicantry)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Holocaust, M/M, historical fiction - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-16 22:42:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7287619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iguessicantry/pseuds/dannihowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>follow me on tumblr<br/><a href="https://danni-howell.tumblr.com/">danni-howell</a></p></blockquote>





	Another Time and Place

##  _July 1940_

 

“What if I am next? I am going to die!”

“I will not let that happen. The Nazis won’t do that in France. That will not happen here.”

“How do you know?” Dan trembled. “Everyone knows what they did to the Jews in Germany! Philippe, they know.”

Phil didn’t know what else to say. His boyfriend was terrified of what was next to come. The world was changing. Governments fell into the hands of Adolf Hitler and although they lived in France, they were in no way safe. Dan was scared; his mother was Jewish while his father was Catholic. A ‘mixed’ marriage was rare but his parents came from modern families that respected the union. Dan knew he couldn’t hide his heritage from the invaders. He wasn’t __Aryan__ by any means. His features were far too dark by their standards, the brown eyes and curly brunette mop of hair would only serve to convict him by their hellish laws.

 

The Nazis have just invaded Paris and Dan is already in tears. He knows what’s going to happen. The world seems to be ignoring them; the Jews. No one seems to care that his Austrian cousins had to flee to the Netherlands. It was only by pure luck that they got out in time. His world was changing. Dan was young and artistic and beloved. He was beautiful and kind. He had a sense of humor and a genuine heart. Phil loved him before he even realized it. The boys grew up together. They were sixteen when they first kissed. Neither was too afraid to do so. When they broke apart, Phil confessed, “I wish we had done that sooner.” Dan smiled and kissed him again as a wave came on the shore. It was a warm summer in France and young love was easy, even for them.

 

People talked but no one knew for sure. They were just classmates, neighbors and friends. They were just that. Phil’s family was a devout Christian one, which was, for the most part, accepting of other people. Attitudes were changing too, however. His father was originally from Germany. They were Aryan and proud of it.

 

Phil never cared however. His blue eyes didn’t seem to matter to him as much as it did to them. The only reason he ever liked them was that Dan used to stare at them, allowing Phil to stare right back at his brown ones. The blonde hair from his childhood had turned to a dark brown.

 

In the summer of 1939, they became flatmates despite Phil’s family’s pleas for him to live with someone else.  They enjoyed their freedom but in September, Dan felt the cold wind blow in from the north and read the headline: Germany Invades Poland. Two days later, war with Germany was declared but they were still young and in their honeymoon period. Eighteen was the age of conscription but Phil wouldn’t be on the list. He was incredibly nearsighted. His eyes save him once again. Dan could not serve. Laws didn’t allow it. __He was the enemy anyway.__

——————

## September 1940

 

Dan was now considered subhuman, a plague; a cockroach. One day, they got the news that all Jews must report their status to the police. Dan knew better. While his neighbors feared the punishment if they didn’t release the information, he knew they would use it to find him one day. Phil worried about him, about the two of them. The neighbors, especially the nosey ones, were cause for concern. Usually, no one suspected two young men of sharing a flat together but he still worried. They lived in that part of Paris that was for the students. Young people practically lived on top of each other.

 

But laws were passed against his kind as well though there was no way you could tell by looking at him or checking his birth certificate for mother’s maiden name. Dan was his main concern.

The laws were strict; within the year, Dan wasn’t allowed in public spaces. Leaving their flat to go anywhere was next to impossible for him. It was too risky.

——————-

## September 1941

 

People were disappearing. Dan’s Jewish classmates, the ones who he’d gone to the cinema with and the ones he’d invited to his bar mitzvah, were gone. Friends visited their flat because Dan couldn’t leave anymore. It was only their most trusted friends by June and by July, no one. The French police led a raid and over the course of two days, over 13,000 people were detained; children on their way home from school disappeared into thin air. Phil rushed home when it happened to find Dan hidden in the bathtub.

“Daniel, you cannot stay here. They will find you,” he said, picking him up out of the basin. Dan’s eyes were red from crying and his face full of fear. “My mother…,” he started. “She’s gone. No one knows where she’s gone,” he cried. Phil took him to the kitchen, sat him down to make him tea.

“Let’s hope she doesn’t suffer.”

 Dan nods because he knows what it means now that she’s gone. Phil prays that night while hearing screams from outside their window. He hears a woman scream and muffled shouts. Then nothing. Dan doesn’t sleep. He’s afraid. They’re going to burst in that front door any minute and rip him away from Phil’s arms.

 

————

“We shouldn’t sleep in the same bed anymore,” Dan tells him as their cuddled up together in bed one night.

“Why?”

“What if they come in and see… us?” he said gesturing to the both of them with his hands. “I know they will take me for sure but you are safe. No one needs to know. One of us should have the chance to live.”

“No! Stop talking like that. They won’t find you. I will not let that happen!”

Phil fists his hand in Dan’s flannel nightshirt as if his grip will keep the boy here with him forever.

“Philippe, calm down,” Dan begged, caressing Phil’s soft, warm cheek. “We have to be careful.”

 

“One last kiss in bed then?”

 

“Mhm,” Dan conceded happily. “One last kiss.”

 

Phil leaned forward to connect their lips, pushing Dan onto their mattress. Phil breaks the kiss to look at him again. He loves him so much and he’s so close to being without him he almost can’t take it. Tears form at the corners of his eyes but Dan kisses him again before they fall. “Not tonight,” he breathes. Phil nods, wiping his tears away. Soft kisses become hitched breaths and soft moans. They’re spent by the end of it all and they sleep well. The state of the world is forgotten for a few precious hours.

 

## January 1942

 

Phil comes home to an empty flat. The door’s been kicked in and Dan—

“Daniel?” he calls in a whisper. “Daniel?!” he shouts running through the small three-room flat. “Daniel?!”

Phil’s starting to panic, the hot tears streaming down his face. He runs into the hallway to find two other doors left open in much the same way. The door across the way opens slowly. Behind it, stands a child of about nine years old. He says nothing.

“What happened? Tell me!”

“The Gestapo,” the boy says.

———————–

 

## May 2000

 

“After they took him away, I had gotten word through a few good friends of mine that he was sent to Poland. They weren’t sure which camp it was but I knew he was gone. Dan was strong but th-they were stronger. They had no hearts. Nothing human could be that cruel.

That summer, I joined the resistance…“

 

Phil was now 79 years old and speaking to a tour group at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. After the war, he searched and searched and searched for Dan. After a while of wandering all over Europe after the war, he’d moved to the United States in 1960. He looked for Dan for fifteen years before leaving France.

 

“It was when we had managed to get steal a few documents from the police headquarters that I knew he was sent Auschwitz. He might have escaped, died in transport or in the gas chambers. Nobody knew. His mother survived but she was extremely malnourished. She went to live with his father once he had found her.”

————–

Phil lived in Manhattan, New York when he came to the US. He had family living there already that had left Europe long before the war started. When he arrived, he worked menial jobs and eventually got a job as a translator at the UN in 1966. He worked closely with the diplomats of Europe and Africa, as French was his strongest language. One day, during a summit discussing the long-term effects of genocide, he heard a familiar voice speaking. “Bonjour, Mesdames et Messieurs, mon nom est Daniel Havel…”

 

He got up from his seat next to a diplomat from Luxembourg and adjusted his black wire frames. “Daniel?” he whispered to himself. He couldn’t believe it. “Daniel!” he shouted not realizing he was disrupting the entire ceremony. The tall man at the front of the room standing at the podium looked away from his notes and towards Phil. He gasped and covered his mouth in shock and happiness.

“Philippe?!”

 

Phil nodded, covering his mouth too. Dan gave a short apology to the assembly, “Pardonnez-moi!” and ran to Phil who stood in the center aisle of the large auditorium. Dan runs into his arms and hugs him as his eyes well up with tears. Phil pulls back to make sure it’s really him and chuckles at his tears, not recognizing that he’s crying too, even harder. “Philippe, I can’t believe it’s you. It’s really you!” Dan cried. The people watching them were highly confused and Phil gained a little composure to pull Dan into the hallway away from peering eyes.

 

“I thought you were dead. Oh my god! You’re here and you’re in front of me and I never thought I w—“

Dan cut him off with a kiss on the lips. It was quick. No one was around so it okay.

“I’m here, Philippe. I’m here,” Dan choked. Phil hugged him again and sway in his arms.

 

—————

“I had found him, my very best friend. Dan?”

“Thank you,” Dan said picking up where he left off. “As you can see we’re still inseparable today.”

“How did you come to America?” the woman holding a clipboard, surrounded by a group of high school students asked.  

“When we were liberated by the Americans and the British, I got the opportunity to leave Europe and relocate here so I took it. I had gotten a job working with an organization that helped refugees coming into the country. The day I saw him, I was speaking on behalf of my colleague who had been called away. I was not supposed to be there that day.”

Murmurs of astonishment went throughout the small crowd.

“Hey, uh, do you have those numbers on your arm? The barcode?” one student asked.

“I do have numbers on my arm, young man. It’s not really a barcode,” he chuckled, moving his sleeve up his arm.

Every time Phil sees them, he tenses up a little. Dan was not the same when he found him. He had changed. He wasn’t so easy to smile like he used to be. He didn’t take certain things lightly that he did when he was nineteen. When they had moved in together once more, Phil had trouble sleeping at night as Dan often had night terrors that left him shaking. Phil didn’t know what Dan knew. It was strange because you see, Phil was always the more knowledgeable one. Between the two, Phil always had better marks and Dan hung on his every word. He never told him as much but they both knew Dan depended on Phil’s reasoning and logic.

But things were different now. Dan was more cryptic than before. There were days when he could not talk and there were days when he was gleeful and spontaneous. One day in early May, when snow still laid on the grass from a late season snow storm, Dan decided that they should go to the beach. He pulled Phil out of bed, grabbed a few things and they were off to North Carolina, the only place within a reasonable distance that didn’t have snow on the ground. Phil loved those days. Dan was practically manic sometimes—but only sometimes.

As they got older, the memories became fainter and fainter. Dan calmed down quite a bit. The night terrors were few and far apart. His silences only lasting a few minutes.

They lived together in New York, traveling to Europe every five years or so until they had no reason left to return. By 1980, their parents had died; most of Dan’s extended family didn’t make it through the war forty years earlier.

Their American neighbors did wonder about the two men living next door. No one ever said anything. The women would pass in the hallway and give a nod and smile. Most of the men avoided their eyes. They weren’t sure if it was because they had been figured out or because they lived in New York City. It was most likely a mixture of both.

———————-

“Did you ever get married, Mr. Havel?” another woman asked. “My grandfather lost my grandmother because she was pregnant when they got to the camp. My mother and her sister were hidden before they were arrested. I guess my question is, did you lose anyone really important to you outside of your family?”

Dan smiled and told her, “I did but I found them again. I never married though.” Phil nodded and smiled. Dan sighed, “Maybe in another time and place.” 

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr  
> [danni-howell](https://danni-howell.tumblr.com/)


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